The Shams power station is a 100 MW parabolic-trough solar facility, although it relies on a gas-operated booster heater to increase steam temperature from 380°C to 540°C. Even just with Google Earth, it looks quite impressive. Being subject to dust storms in its desert location, keeping the facility’s parabolic mirrors clean and shiny requires trucks with robotic scrubbing arms.

Live tracking (3D version here) allows fans from across the world to follow the Abu Dhabi Solar Challenge, which involves 15 teams, who finished the second day in this official order (official timings for the first two days shown in grey):

As the map above shows, the current sequence of cars is 1, 2, 34, 8, 32, 55, 30, 75, 9, 95, 15, 29, 17, and 90, with 256 apparently getting a late start (the map also shows the dunes of the famous Rubʿ al-Khali to the south). Only minutes separate the lead cars, so today promises to be a real nail-biter.